"underpin much of the bullshit of the past forty years"

If I ever get a chance to teach a course on Kim Stanley Robinson I think one of my questions would be is he fundamentally a pessimist or an optimist when it comes to the ability of humans to think and act collectively (i.e., is society worth it?).  While hardly a wide-eyed wishful thinker, I think his work demonstrates that people can get their shit together once they understand what's truly at stake.  (Governments and plutocrats, not so much, but still.)

Here he is in The New Yorker getting to the guts of our current situation:

"Margaret Thatcher said that 'there is no such thing as society,' and Ronald Reagan said that 'government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.' These stupid slogans marked the turn away from the postwar period of reconstruction and underpin much of the bullshit of the past forty years.

We are individuals first, yes, just as bees are, but we exist in a larger social body. Society is not only real; it’s fundamental. We can’t live without it. And now we’re beginning to understand that this 'we' includes many other creatures and societies in our biosphere and even in ourselves. Even as an individual, you are a biome, an ecosystem, much like a forest or a swamp or a coral reef. Your skin holds inside it all kinds of unlikely coöperations, and to survive you depend on any number of interspecies operations going on within you all at once. We are societies made of societies; there are nothing but societies. This is shocking news—it demands a whole new world view. And now, when those of us who are sheltering in place venture out and see everyone in masks, sharing looks with strangers is a different thing. It’s eye to eye, this knowledge that, although we are practicing social distancing as we need to, we want to be social—we not only want to be social, we’ve got to be social, if we are to survive. It’s a new feeling, this alienation and solidarity at once. It’s the reality of the social; it’s seeing the tangible existence of a society of strangers, all of whom depend on one another to survive. It’s as if the reality of citizenship has smacked us in the face.

As for government: it’s government that listens to science and responds by taking action to save us. Stop to ponder what is now obstructing the performance of that government. Who opposes it? Right now we’re hearing two statements being made. One, from the President and his circle: we have to save money even if it costs lives. The other, from the Centers for Disease Control and similar organizations: we have to save lives even if it costs money. Which is more important, money or lives? Money, of course! says capital and its spokespersons. Really? people reply, uncertainly. Seems like that’s maybe going too far? Even if it’s the common wisdom? Or was."

The powerful individuals and interests who think money is more important than people are not going to disappear without a fight.  But at least the scale of this epidemic has shaken people up enough to realize many of our supposed leaders are, in fact, great big assholes who think you and your family and friends -- especially your grandparents -- are simply the harmless, de rigeur blood sacrifices required by the ever-grinning maw of global Capitalism.

This recognition fills people with terror as much as it does a well-deserved anger.  And it catalyzes our political instincts as thoroughly as it does our ability to imagine future economic systems where we don't have to choose between passably functioning stock markets and mounds of innocent, putrefying dead folks.

"Alienation and solidarity at once" indeed.